If only we learned to love our wayward kids!

A couple of weeks ago, we wrote about that very embarrassing CNN report entitled "Juvenile Prisoners" and last week, the local television networks suddenly came up with their own versions of the plight of our children who are inside our jails together with adults, for various offenses, ranging from petty theft to poverty which if you didn’t know… is not a crime. So the question is, what is the Arroyo government going to do about this problem? Mind you, we have become the embarrassing example of the world about this pressing problem, although it isn’t exclusive to the Philippines, as it is also just as much a problem in many other countries as in ours.

Well, we gathered that Interior and Local Government Secretary Angelo Reyes is planning a move toward separating juvenile crime suspects awaiting trial and sentencing from adult inmates at detention centers. Reyes said, "This is a direction which I feel the government has been meaning to take, except that at the moment we do not have the necessary funds to put it in motion." In batting for the construction of facilities for the exclusive use of minors facing charges, you just got a bird’s eye picture of what the government wants to do… but cannot… thanks to a serious lack of funds! In the end, we only hear mere rhetoric from our public officials, while children languish inside our very crowded jails. Let’s stop talking and start doing something!

A couple of years ago, when we had an occasion to visit the Bagong Buhay Rehabilitation Center (BBRC) in Cebu City, what appalled me was that the jail was so full, only a few "special" prisoners had their own bunks, the rest of the rabble had to make do with sleeping in shifts… which meant some prisoners had to sleep in the morning because the other prisoners used their bunks to sleep in the afternoon. This situation was also the same during breakfast, lunch and dinner.

But while, thank God, I did not find any juvenile prisoners at the BBRC, it doesn’t mean that Cebu doesn’t have its share of minor offenders. But thanks to the herculean efforts of Cebu City’s First Lady, Dame Margot Osmeña, of Cebu City’s Task Force Street Children, they have been operating Operation Second Chance in a new rehabilitation facility for minors up in Bo. Kalunasan in Cebu City, something that the other local government units ought to emulate. We’ll write more about this in future columns.

But then, we already know all the lame excuses from our public officials why minors cannot be separated from the adults and that’s because of lack of funds… a problem endemic to this country. I’m sure that Margot Osmeña also faced the same situation, but certainly, she did not have any lack of motivation, determination and love for our wayward children. Only until we understand what God teaches us — to love one another and our neighbor as ourselves — can we comprehend the daunting task ahead of us.

I don’t have to overemphasize that when a minor lands in jail and gets mixed up with hardened criminals (though we still afford these criminals their right to presumption of innocence), the chances of this minor returning to a normal life gets close to nil, as he gets to learn only the way of life of criminals. In the BBRC, I did find children who were brought in by their visiting mothers on their conjugal visits. What I found out was that there were mothers who stayed longer than the usual conjugal hours; they have practically made the jail their family home. Now that was than more two years ago… and I complained about this to the jail authorities. I hope they have fixed that problem already.

So while juvenile prisoners languish in many of our jails, the members of Congress (yes, the very people whom society has tasked and elected to allocate funds for such matters) are so busy with "political" issues like the impeachment process or the breaking up of Cebu province into tiny poorer pieces, they have no time to react to that embarrassing CNN Special Report. No sir, they’re just too engrossed about their political way of life to even reply to that embarrassing report… because it is obvious that they have no answers anyway.

Indeed, Congress has become callous and indifferent to the problems of this country, hence the Filipino people are not only asking for a change in the system of governance, but a change in the uncaring attitudes of Filipinos. I recall a couple of years ago that letter written by a Korean on what’s wrong with the Philippines (and spread throughout the Internet) that we don’t love our country the way the South Koreans love theirs. That was admittedly another painful observation about Filipinos. But how can we even love our country when we can’t love our children? Perhaps, we ought to ask ourselves whether we would even see that change of attitude within our lifetime.

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One glaring example of the Filipino’s uncaring attitude is the way we ought to combat the still raging problem of the dreaded dengue fever in Cebu City, cases of which have increased sharply in the past month, although health officials still refuse to admit that this problem has grown to epidemic proportions. To combat the spread of dengue fever, we saw photos of our public officials spraying pesticide in canals and other areas, hoping to destroy the breeding places of the dengue-carrying mosquitoes.

I gathered that the United States Center for Disease Control frowns at the idea of using pesticide in controlling the spread of mosquitoes because they dub it as ineffective and worse, these chemicals seep into the aquifer or our underground water supply, a fact that is already happening in Cebu.

But before you say that the Americans are not experienced in fighting mosquitoes because they don’t have mosquitoes in North America, let me remind you that they faced this problem more than a hundred years ago when they built the Panama Canal, where hundreds of workers died due to malaria, which is also carried by the deadly mosquitoes.

It was only until the Americans realized that the solution was simple enough: to rid the surroundings of items that allow mosquitoes to breed… and that did the trick! Now, did the Americans use any high-tech device or chemicals to fight malaria? Nope, the answer is simple enough: the key to combating mosquito-borne diseases is cleanliness and sanitation, something that the average Filipino still has to learn and make a part of his life.

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For e-mail responses to this article, write to [email protected]. Bobit Avila’s columns can also be accessed through www.thefreeman.com. He also hosts a weekly talk show, "Straight from the Sky," shown every Monday, at 8 p.m., only in Metro Cebu on Channel 15 of SkyCable.